Tag Archives: blm protests

Kill the bill protests this May Day – urgent support needed to defend rights

The government’s response to last year’s mass Black Lives Matter protests has been to produce a report denying the existence of institutional racism and to bring forward legislation to make many protests illegal.

The Police and Crime Bill would give to the police the power decide which protests are lawful and which are not, just like in Russia and China.

This is a blatant attack on our democratic right of freedom of assembly and the right to protest. We have to kill the bill.

The bill also targets the Roma and traveller communities – arguably some of the most marginalised communities in the UK.

But in truth there are only so many police and if the people say no and refuse to comply then their laws become a paper tiger.

The answer lies with resistance from black and white people together across all the social movements, such as Extinction Rebellion, the Women’s Movement (Justice for Sarah Everard, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry!) and the trade union movement – and of course the Black Lives Matter movement.

Kill the Bill protests are taking place all over the UK today this May Day – join the fightback!

May Day is workers day – Black and white unite and fight!

Kill the bill protest – 1 May

London Trafalgar Square 12 noon

Aberystwyth Clock Tower 1pm

Bath Bath Abbey 2pm

Birmingham Victoria Square 11am

Brighton The Level 1pm

Bristol Castle Park 12 noon AND College Green 6pm

Cambridge Parkers Piece opposite police station 1pm

Chatham 11.30am top of Church St

Chichester Priory Park 12 noon

Coventry Broadgate 1pm

Eastbourne Hyde Gardens 1pm

Edinburgh The Pavilion Cafe 3.30pm

Exeter Bedford Square 1pm

Harlow Town Park showground 2pm

Hastings Cornwallis Gardens 12 noon

Haverfordwest Picton Fields 1pm

Lancaster Dalton Square 11.30am

Leamington Pump Room Gardens 1pm

Leeds Woodhouse Moor 3pm

Liverpool Derby Square 12 noon

Lowestoft opposite WH Smith 12 noon

Luton Market Hall 1pm

Manchester St Peter’s Square 4pm

Margate Nayland Rock Shelter 1pm

Middlesbrough Centre Square 1pm

Newcastle Grey’s Monument 1pm

Northampton Cobblers Last Statue, town centre, 1pm

Norwich City Hall 1pm

Nottingham Pavilion on Forest Recreation Ground 12 noon

Oxford Manzil Way Green 3pm

Plymouth Charles Cross police station 2pm

Portsmouth Guildhall Square 12 noon

Sheffield Devonshire Green 1pm

Shrewsbury The Quarry 1pm

Southampton Bargate 12 noon

Southend top of Pier Hill 1.30pm

Stoke outside Hanley bus station 1pm

Taunton Great Western hotel car park 12 noon

Tower Hamlets Bethnal Green Gardens 10.30am rally before attending central London demo

Truro Lemon Quay 2pm

Winchester Police station, top of High Street, 12 noon

York Minster 1pm

More updates here

Kill the bill!

Solidarity with Sarah Everard and the women’s movement – kill the bill

Sarah Everard was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by a serving policeman from an elite unit, and now a vigil of solidarity and respect for her has been violently attacked by the same police.

Calls for Met police commissioner Cressida Dick to resign have been met by obfuscation and denial by the Met and politicians as usual have failed to rise to the occasion, preferring to let thuggish police off the hook.

Unfortunately Anna Birley, on of the organisers at Reclaim These Streets, is not calling for Dick’s resignation either in the mistaken belief that because she’s a woman she will be sympathetic to this rebirth of a miltant womens movement.

“We are a movement of women seeking to support and empower other women, and as one of the most senior women in British policing history, we do not want to add to the pile-on,” said Birley.

“We do want her to meet with us. We were hugely disappointed that she put out a statement yesterday without talking to any of the people who were organising the vigil and had such a difficult experience with the Metropolitan police force.”

But the police are our of control. If anyone doubts that, then the scenes at Clapham Common should have removed any such doubts.

Thankfully Sisters Uncut has a much better approach than Birley:

But things are about to get a whole lot worse with new legislation currently before parliament to give the police even more powers, specifically to further encroach on the right to protest.

Sarah Everard must not have died in vain

Put bluntly, the proposed new laws would put greater sanction on defacing statues than on violence against women.

The bill will allow the police to decide which protests will be allowed and which will not, on the spurious basis of whether the protest might be disruptive. But of course the ourpose of many protests is to be disruptive to some degree.

Essentially the Tory government hated the Black Lives Matter protests and those by Extinction Rebellion and now they want revenge by outlawing peaceful protests.

The Tories are playing with fire. Police credibility was already rock-bottom among wide swathes of society, not least among Black people.

Recent events have extended that dismay to many millions of women (and men) who watched on TV screens in disgust as women were manhandled, kicked and punched by male police officers.

The Tories want the police to have more powers to harass and jail black people and Muslims, target Gypsies and Travellers and to silence protesters.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill – just like the Covid legislation – is being rammed through parliament with hardly any debate to stop protests like those for Sarah Everard.

Attack on right to protest

All vestige of democratic control over the police is being removed to be replaced with carte blanche for police to decide which protests are allowed and which are not.

There will be a new trespass law to target Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups, with clauses citing “unauthorised encampments”for closure without providing alternatives.

Homeless people will also be swept up in the legislation if they are sleeping rough in what could also be defined as unauthorised encampments’

As we reported several weeks ago, the legislation also includes more draconian stop and search provisions that mean anyone previously guilty of knife crime offences can be stopped and searched without reason, but how are the police meant to work out who these people are – unless of course they are going to assume that all Black kids are knife carriers.

This is a recipe for even more racial profiling and oppressive policing of Black youth and others. All this is in addition to the clampdown on protests.

And its not as if the police don’t already have huge powers to restrict protests.

The 1986 Public Order Act already allows the likes of home secretary Priti Patel to curb protests that may involve “serious disruption”. But the new bill goes much further, allowing the home secretary to “make provision about the meaning” of the phrase.

Tories and Met police are sexist and racist

The Tories want to stop protests that they don’t like, while claiming to be in favour of democracy. They are liars and hypocrites.

We have to make sure that Sarah Everard’s murder leads to real change in this country.

Far from the police being a reflection of society, they represent the worst of society in their outsized sexism and racism.

There are protests taking place today to defend the right to protest and to demand an end to violence against women and action from the government. The proposed legislation contains no mention of violence against women.

The issue of who polices the police and who can you turn to for protection as a women or Black person when the police are sexist and racist throws big questions about the type of society we live in and the limits of our so called democracy.

The government’s words of condolence to Sarah Everard’s family mean nothing unless they are forced to make a change. For that to happen we need to stay on the streets – and the fight for women’s rights requires the support of all of us, as does the fight for racial justice.

Protest at Tottenham police station Saturday 8 August 1pm – No Justice, No Peace

No justice, No peace

Saturday 8th August 2020

Protest at Tottenham Police Station – 1pm

Our immediate demands:

Stop the overpolicing of black communities

Stop the use of excessive force

Stop the use of tasers

Stop S60 searches

Stop the disproportionate use of handcuffs during searches

Supporters include: by Tottenham Rights, Stopwatch and BLMUK

#blacklivesmatter

Feds repression in Portland faces growing resistance

For two months there have been daily protests against racial inequality and police brutality in Portland, Oregon.

Police repression has not been enough to stop the protests and so Trump has upped the ante, as he makes a bid to turn law and order into an election issue from which he can benefit, such is his cynicism.

But last night saw thousands of citizens on the streets as the movement widens not just as a protest for black lives but against the violent repression of the Fed forces, in the shape of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol agencies.

Both agencies have become heavily militarised over the years and are now being used against ordinary US citizens, in action lawmakers condemn as illegal.

Federal units have been operating as if in a war zone and using the tactics and operational procedures befitting of a full-blown dictatorship.

Protesters have been snatched and arrested by individuals dressed in unmarked camouflage suits. Eighteen now face serious Federal charges, raising the stakes further.

Portland citizens shot, gassed and clubbed by Trump stormtroopers

Peaceful citizens, including the city’s major, armed services veterans and a peaceful contingent of all-women protesters, have been tear-gassed and/or clubbed by the Feds.

As seen elsewhere in the US, the press has also been a frequent target of law enforcement bodies.

So-called non-lethal weapons that can in fact be lethal depending on how they are used, have been deployed with wild abandon by Federal forces acting as an out of control occupying force in the city.

Attempts to get judges to rule the deployment of the violent Fed troops illegal have failed so far.

The protest movement is overwhelmingly white, and that’s what probably riles Trump and his stormtroopers more than anything else.

Activists are attempting to organise for strikes in the city to drive out the Feds.

Cutting off all services to the Fed buildings in the city and the associated troops that were brought in under the pretence of protecting that property, could be a highly effective approach.

The people of Portland urgently need solidarity of the BLM movement and others from around the US and abroad.

Watch this space for further developments.